Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
